


days and nights

by c_onstellations



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Fake Marriage, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of drugs, Minor Lee Jeno/Mark Lee, Multiple identities, Non-Linear Narrative, summer fling turned something else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:01:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23479639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c_onstellations/pseuds/c_onstellations
Summary: Fate loops them together once, twice...
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin
Comments: 22
Kudos: 103
Collections: OBSCURE SORROWS FIC FEST





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anchorage  
> n. the desire to hold on to time as it passes, like trying to keep your grip on a rock in the middle of a river, feeling the weight of the current against your chest while your elders float on downstream, calling over the roar of the rapids, “Just let go-it’s okay-let go.”
> 
> Heartworm  
> n. a relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

"No, you don't understand—"

"What am I not understanding, Nana? You're freaking out because you have to get fake-married? Calm down, why are you so antsy? You’ve done this with _me_ before."

"No, Mark, listen to me. It's not the marriage that I'm losing my shit over. It's _who_ I have to marry."

“Isn’t the Chinese agency sending their man? How could you possibly already know—”

“Mark, that’s the problem. I _know_ who it is.”

"Who?"

"It’s the boy from last summer."

When Jaemin says that his life is absurd, he's not joking.

It’s one thing to have a summer fling— momentarily diving into something that feels like love in a foreign city—hungry for the warmth radiating off the exposed skin of a fleeting lover. It’s okay, Jaemin thinks, simply because they both know that they are surely barrelling towards an inexorable heartbreak. The shared knowledge that eventually they will have no choice but to fall out of love will be enough to carry them towards denouement. Because this love has an expiry date.

It’s another thing to see the same ex-lover resurface in his line of work.

It’s almost as if Fate wants Jaemin to suffer.

Na Jaemin. South Korea’s NIS top operative. Successfully thwarted the assassination of the country’s President, not once, but _twice_. Young, ruthless, and skilled. Agents like these are practically superstars in their field. One in a million.

None of that could have prepared him for Huang Renjun. What are the chances of Jaemin accidentally falling in love with one of China’s finest intelligence agents? Slim, but not zero, as evidenced by Jaemin’s latest assignment: teaming up with the Chinese MSS to spearhead what has the potential to become one of the most major Sino-Korean drug busts in history.

So here they are, fake-married in a dingy, tiny apartment somewhere between Yeongdongpo and Mullae. It’s only Day Two but Jaemin has never been more restless. It’s honestly driving him insane, how this is already their 48th hour together in close proximity and somehow his _fake-husband_ hasn’t even uttered half a word about the history between them.

Jaemin can’t even look at him for more than three seconds without thinking about the Barcelonan sun in his eyes and Renjun’s hands in his. They’re in Seoul now, Jaemin has to continuously remind himself, mid-rainy season, on the cusp of the biggest breakthrough of his life.

If only he could stop thinking about wanting to kiss Renjun. If only he had fallen out of love the way they had agreed to.

They first meet somewhere in Barcelona. Before the sun-soak, before Jaemin has time to build his ambitions on a future he isn't sure he can hold on to, before a time where Renjun stands in their unwittingly shared kitchenette with his arms wrapped around Jaemin’s waist like that moment was forever.

This time, Jaemin is John Doe.

James, actually.

It's a dingy laundromat tucked behind one of the back streets. The shop is empty, for the most part, a pair of light bulbs flickering yellow and dim over a row of machines. Only one lone dryer is running when Jaemin pushes the door open and shuffles into the shop space.

From his peripheral vision, he sees a shadow dart off the far counter and scamper across the floor. Jaemin’s grip around his basket full of unwashed clothes tightens — _sorry, occupational hazard_ — as he plasters his back against the wall.

Ten seconds elapse. Jaemin’s gaze settles on two eyes, pupils dilated. He shifts the basket, balancing it on his hip instead. Jaemin blinks, focuses once more, two eyes, a tail.

It’s a cat. A calico, white splattered grey splattered orange.

Jaemin’s been on vacation for too long. He exhales, a long, shaky breath that even he can’t read. A sigh of relief? Of disappointment? Here and now, he is meant to be nobody, and quite frankly, he’s bored out of his mind.

One light bulb glows dimmer than the other, the filament crackling orange and humming like a bee. The shop is completely quiet, save for the buzzing of the bulb and the clattering of the lone dryer. The smell of cheap powder soap permeating the air. The cat weaves between Jaemin’s legs in a path of little infinity signs as he tries to get his laundry done. Jaemin finishes emptying the basket into the machine.

Now all he had to do was pay. He reaches for his wallet. For some damned reason, the calico mistakes the charm hanging off of it to be a plaything and leaps up onto Jaemin’s chest. Which would’ve been endearing because the cat was beginning to grow on Jaemin, except that half the contents of his wallet were now scattered across the floor, in places he couldn’t even see.

He had only just gotten up from placing his cheek against the floor in a bid to look under a washing machine when he hears a voice. Jaemin tenses up.

The void enquires, “are you Korean _?_ ”

For the first time in two weeks, he understands someone without having to look up Papago or break out the body language. Jaemin squints, momentarily blinded yet again by the newly dim room now that he switched his phone flashlight off. 

A fist closed around a won coin is thrust into his face, and Jaemin belatedly becomes aware of the body attached to it.

It’s a boy who looks his age, perhaps even younger.

The first meeting of many.

To be fair, everything begins with the cat.

This is several days later: He occasionally helps out at a bakery that is somehow affiliated with his landlady, because apparently, the sight of Jaemin’s smile overcomes all previously insurmountable language barriers and sends customers straight into the grasps of consumerism. He gets placed by the shop window, almost a regular fixture, really, behind a glass panel by the cooling racks, tasked with the job of filling jars full of cookies. The cookies are small, irregularly shaped, and smell of cinnamon. Between shovels of the spiced biscuits, he falls in and out of conversations that he overhears but cannot understand.

The itch to participate in conversation is real. The people here have been nothing but kind to him, but their shared vocabulary was limited and conversation topics barren. Jaemin wonders if he should try going back to that laundromat again. Maybe that boy from before would be there again and he could live off the kick that saying “good afternoon” in Korean would give him for the next week or so.

Maybe.

It is as he’s lost in thought that the cat makes its entrance. It moves in an almost tactical way: slinks in through the glass doors, camouflaged through a human sea of legs, and then, almost like a rocket launcher of sorts, locks its target on the glass panel separating Jaemin from the customers and simply _goes_.

Something in Jaemin’s long-dormant reflexes awakes. Immediately, he slams the jar he’s holding onto the counter and shrugs off his food-safe gloves to raise both his arms in the air.

It looks ridiculous. What’s more ridiculous is, Jaemin _actually_ catches the air-borne feline. It sits in the cradle of his arms like that was where it belonged. _Great_. Not only does Jaemin’s presence stimulate the economy, it also encourages cats to launch themselves at him.

The bell above the door jingles, revealing a stumbling boy. A familiar one. This time, the void is filled, he comes in with the midday sun, a mop of tousled blonde hair and shoelaces untied from the run here, his eyes scanning the interior of the store for a certain troublemaker.

The criminal in question is cradled in Jaemin’s arms. “Good afternoon,” he grins.

It’s not every day that a cat chooses to launch itself against the same stranger twice. The boy is clearly stricken, offers to buy him dinner, some sandwich place two streets over, because, “it’s good, believe me.”

That’s exactly what Jaemin does, he believes him.

The boy goes to collect their order, and he turns his head back a moment later, embarrassed, tugs at the back of Jaemin’s uniform shirt to whisper, “I know that I’m supposed to be buying this, but I forgot my wallet.” 

Jaemin pays, and it’s all good, really. They sit at the kerb outside the store, eating sloppily with an attempt to contain the mess to themselves. The cat lays curled up against Jaemin’s feet.

The boy — “Injun,” as he introduces himself — comes into the bakery the next day, with apology sandwiches. Comes the day after, too. And the day after that. Maybe, just maybe, Jaemin lives an entire week of conversation.

An entire week, and a little more. Jaemin just thinks that his life is absurd sometimes.

The boy is in his bed.

He got Injun into his bed somehow and Injun’s hands, _oh_ , Injun’s hands are making their way down his rumpled button-up, Injun’s hands are peeling the fabric off his skin, Injun’s hands are hovering over his flesh, so close that Jaemin can feel the heat radiating off his fingertips.

Jaemin’s senses are on fire.

“I - I’m not from around here,” he gasps. “N-not going to be here for long.”

“And you think I am?” Injun diverts his attention from Jaemin’s clavicle to look at his face properly. “No strings attached, darling,” Injun pats his cheek before diving back in.

Jaemin is in the palm of this boy’s hand, and he just melts. His life is absurd sometimes.

His Injun comes back home one day, bottle of red wine in one hand and a bag of produce in the other.

Jaemin can hear the grin stretching across his face when he announces, “let’s make sangria!”

They are standing in their not-quite kitchen, Jaemin unpacking the produce and placing them on the barely-enough counter, Injun somewhere behind him, scouring the cupboards for a mason jar.

Jaemin admires a box of strawberries, “how did you afford this?”

“The lady at the farmer’s market was in a hurry to sell them.”

In the end, Jaemin doesn’t comment on how the blueberries look a little too pristine to be clearance stock, raspberries still plump. Perhaps, he — _they_ — deserved a treat sometimes.

Hours later they are wine drunk, Jaemin slumped into their small couch and Injun in his lap. Jaemin feels it, the taste of sangria fresh on his lips, hands around his waist and heart full, heart full of the boy kissing his neck, _heart full_.

Stop.

Jaemin subconsciously pulls away from the contact, _stop_ , his heart dipping, dipping low and the thought almost makes it hard to breathe, _stop_ , how much longer will this last?

It’s sometime past morning, the midday sun already slanting through the windows. There is a warm hand resting somewhere between his chest and abdomen.

“How come you’re still here?”

“The cat picked you twice,” Injun’s voice is thick with sleep. Glimpses of dark red blooming across his neck as he scooches over closer for his body to be flush with Jaemin. “The cats, they never lie.”

He presses his lips into Jaemin’s clavicle. Over and over, as if each one was sealing up a secret love letter. Jaemin believes him.

And this is where everything begins to fall apart.

Jaemin is startled awake at some inhumane hour, the sound of a phone ringing abruptly taking him from his dreams and insolently dunking him back into reality. Injun stirs, but he doesn't wake; Jaemin is closer to the dresser, so it is his arm that is stretched out from the duvet, halfheartedly investigating the rude awakening.

“— mmfghello?”

“ _Ge_?” the voice chirps back.

Jaemin doesn’t recognise it. He throws his share of the duvet back to sit up, befuddled. Maybe being upright will help him figure this out. “Hello?”

“Renjun-ge?” The voice rings crisp and clear. It’s unmistakable, but _Renjun? Renjun who_?

Upon hearing this, in an unprecedented show of quick reflexes, Injun shoots up, throws the duvet clean off the bed, basically, and swipes the device from Jaemin’s half-awake state, to which he immediately rattles off in — is that Mandarin?

Nothing makes sense. Injun leaves the room clothed in Jaemin’s shirt, the one with the stretched out collar, still on the phone. Jaemin reclaims the duvet, but it doesn’t feel like anything.

_Oh c’mon,_ Jaemin cajoles himself, _he was not meant to mean this much. That’s what the both of you agreed on. He’s allowed to keep secrets. You’re living one right now._ It’s ass o’clock, Jaemin’s trust issues are making a grand comeback, and he’s _cold_. This is too much for him to take, really.

The following days don’t make any more sense either. Injun — _Renjun_ — is called back home, wherever it is, on urgent business, so he goes. The cat lives with Jaemin now.

Life goes on until it doesn’t. James has always been a nobody, lived the entirety of his short-lived life as a quaint onlooker of sorts into a society that he has no place to slip into. But _Jaemin_ , Jaemin is a whole other problem.

Something in his mind eats away at his conscience. Every night he sleeps in a bed where he first felt his resolve fall apart, and he thinks he might have flouted that rule, thinks that it was _him_ who had fallen straight into a love that neither of them knew how to carry. It had given him nothing; the cat is a living reminder of his loss, and the house lives and breathes something that was never meant to materialise, and as much as Jaemin tries to keep the monsters locked away in the basement, they always run free at the end of the night.

He finally breaks, on the way back from the laundromat. Jaemin drops the cat off with his landlady and calls Taeyong. _Hyung, please send me home now. I don’t know how much more of this I can take._

Jeno barrels into Jaemin’s apartment a mere four hours after Jaemin’s flight touches down in Incheon, ruining Jaemin’s sorry excuse of a nap intended to calibrate his body clock.

Jeno stands at the foot of Jaemin’s bed, looking like he just stepped out of bed himself, sweatpants and ratty pajama shirt with his glasses looped over the stretched-out collar. “Okay, Nana, tell me. Why did you request to get sent back early?”

“Wow, not even a nice ‘welcome back!’ or anything?” Jaemin grumbles into his pillow.

Jeno slips his glasses on just then, “I will, after you tell me _why_ you’re here.”

Jaemin turns over in bed. “Maybe I am a workaholic who misses being in action. I am an agent, maybe I like being in the field.”

“Haha, very funny. The last time you went abroad, Taeyong had to send Jungwoo out to drag you back to Seoul by the ear.”

“Ugh,” Jaemin pulls the blanket over his head and just lays there in the silence, stalling for time. “Can’t I just miss my best friend? Lee Jeno, I came back from _Barcelona_ because I miss sitting in your apartment and eating all your cup ramen and cockblocking you and Mark.”

A hand yanks the blanket down. Jeno doesn’t buy it. “Right, and if you wanted to do that, you’d have been in my apartment at least two hours ago, not here in your bed acting like you’re asleep.”

Jaemin sits up and is immediately faced with Jeno staring him down.

“I can’t tell if you’re looking at me like that because you know I’m not telling you something and you’re mad, or if you just can’t see properly.”

“So you are hiding something from me!” Jeno points an accusing finger in Jaemin’s direction.

“And also, yeah, I realised that I put on Mark’s glasses by accident only just now so I genuinely cannot see for shit.”

Jaemin's read something about the theory of multiple universes before.

He remembers this: two weeks to college graduation, 10.28am, waiting for his friends to reach their brunch location. He's almost half-convinced that there might be some truth to this theory.

10.31am. A little late, but the door to the cafe finally rattles open and his best friends walk in. Mark has an arm wrapped around Jeno's waist, Jeno's car keys twirling around his ring finger. Both of them draw their chairs to sit down in front of him and Jaemin breaks into a knowing grin when he realises that Jeno's wearing Mark's old baseball jacket.

It is then Jaemin decides that it can't be true; there can't be a universe where Jeno doesn't love Mark, and there can't be a universe where Mark doesn't love Jeno.

The universe could never do that.

But this? This is bullshit. Renjun loved him sometimes, a little, and then not at all. Of course, out of all the people Jaemin could have decided to pine over, he chose to fall irrevocably in love with Injun, who he realises, in hindsight, that he knows absolutely nothing about. Go figure.

When the Chinese agents pull up to the building, _Renjun_ is there. Renjun is real, exists outside of Barcelona, outside of Jaemin’s heartbreak avenue of sorts. Renjun is real, and he’s sitting directly across him, while he is Agent Na.

It’s a weird realisation to grapple with. The way that their old story was steeped in deception and yet marked one of the simplest, happiest chapters in Jaemin’s life. The way that their past was inevitably going to haunt them in writing this new one.

The old Renjun, his mouth was no talk, all tongue and teeth. Jaemin’s neck had the marks to prove it.

This Renjun, the man at the boardroom table, must be the same. No heart, all hands.

Jeno had pulled up Renjun’s case credentials for Jaemin before this. Top marksman of his squadron, valedictorian of the military academy, list of impressive accomplished missions under his belt. Jeno couldn’t say very much beyond that because so much of the file had been blacked out.

_No heart, all hands._ The only way to make it in their line of work.

That’s what hindsight tells Jaemin. But Jaemin doesn’t listen to hindsight. He listens to his heart, even when every fibre of his being yells at him to snap out of it, and his heart aches for Renjun to _say something_.

In Jaemin’s head, Renjun is his not-husband. “Husband” as a reminder of why Renjun’s back in his life again, and the “not” to ground him, as a reminder to himself that he’s living another lie.

His not-husband.

Living with his not-husband is essentially deja-vu.

They don’t even discuss whether they’re going to sleep separately or not. The first night, Renjun just climbs under the covers after Jaemin, and they both accept their actions for what they are.

Becomes routine, no questions asked.

The first night, Renjun wakes up bright and early. Jaemin doesn’t, but he can feel when the dip on the other side of the bed disappears. In the morning, he walks into the kitchen and Renjun is sitting, in all his mildly miserable bed-head glory, at their fittingly undersized dining counter dipping digestives into his mug.

“Dude, your stare is so intense,” Renjun’s words are sharp; he’s more awake than Jaemin thought. Renjun looks up at him between mouthfuls of crumbs.

“Sorry.” Jaemin mumbles to the kettle. “Why did you put so little water to boil?”

“I didn’t know when you were going to wake up. It was starting to get cold anyway.”

“You know that I’m a light sleeper.”

“I do.”

Domestic life improves once they fall into the rhythms of this new state of being.

Jaemin gets a job at the pharmacy. The pharmacy was a key spot highlighted in the mission brief, so there was surveillance to be done there. Since they were hiring extra help, Jaemin figures that he ought to pounce on the opportunity presented before him.

In a shared apartment complex, they inevitably meet some neighbours. The Kims on the ninth floor. Old Mrs. Lee on the third floor. Dong Sicheng on the seventh floor. Some more people that Jaemin can’t remember. When they meet their neighbours in the elevator, Renjun wraps an arm around Jaemin’s waist and introduces them as husbands. _Hi, I’m Jun and I’m a photographer who works from home. This is my husband, Min, he works at the pharmacy!_ The grip around his waist tightens. _If you need anything, just let us know._

_Oh! How long have you been married?_ Jaemin’s jaw tenses.

Renjun’s fingers brush over his ring. _About six months now!_

Their rings are matching, presented to them by Taeyong at their final briefing before he’d sent them out on their not-married new life. You’d think for someone like Taeyong, detailed and attentive, that he’d do better, but the rings are ugly steel bands that wrap around their ring finger. No adornment whatsoever. Industrial.

And they’re fake. Jaemin wears it on his ring finger like a dog tag on a soldier in combat, and wishes they commemorated something that actually mattered instead.

Renjun is seated beside him, with the heads of both the Chinese and Korean agencies on the opposite end of the desk. They sign documents, stuff about trust and loyalty and whatever. It’s heavy, but their work rarely isn’t.

Like a solemnisation of sorts, but satirical.

Jaemin thinks, then wills himself to stop thinking. Wills himself to put his details down before Head Qian’s stare melts through his right hand. (Jaemin needs his right hand in order to be the marksman that he is supposed to be, and his right thumb, for the security systems to verify his identity.)

From his peripheral view, Renjun puts his pen down after Jaemin does. Taeyong gets up from his position to collect their completed papers.

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: AGENT0813 TO UPDATE FIELD DIARY._

_._

_._

_._

_[INPUT RECEIVED]_

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: FIELD DIARY UPDATED._

It becomes a routine now.

Every morning, Jaemin gets up at 7, eats breakfast, and gets ready to leave the house by 8. The pharmacy opens at 10 but he gets in a little early to look around and do stock-taking and Think About Agent Stuff (sometimes the Agent Stuff is the other agent that he got assigned with, but that is fine).

Renjun’s lucky. He’s supposedly self-employed so he doesn’t really need to go out of the house if he doesn’t see a need to. But in his waking hours, he’s watching the surveillance cameras that he’d set up, occasionally flying his drone across the city under the guise of getting shots for the photography assignment that doesn’t exist.

Jaemin has a shift almost every other day, so when he’s at work, he’s out for about 12 hours a day. That’s something to be thankful for when they spend the remaining 12 hours sharing each other’s space.

Jaemin eats dinner when he comes home. Renjun works on his own schedule so he has no real reason to wait, but they sit across from each other at their small dining table every night, talking about new developments of the day and whatnot. Jaemin watches Renjun type away on his phone. The phone is important tech for each individual agent, and he knows better than to breach privacy and security protocol. So he doesn’t ask.

Renjun seems to feel Jaemin’s stare and stops typing to read from his notes. “I’m still trying to figure out where they ship from. So far, all the places I’ve looked at have come up blank.” Jaemin’s trying to maintain eye contact with him, but every single time Renjun’s lips purse together he finds his gaze sliding away, away from his eyes and down, down to his mouth and —

Right. Jaemin drops his gaze and stares into his rice. Hard. “Chenle told me that the deliveries are being made every 16th, so there’s not much time left.” Jaemin hasn’t said a word in an entire minute, instead focusing all his energy on the little blue porcelain patterns at the bottom of the bowl. _Come on, you can do this._

“Jaemin, are you listening?” Renjun chides. Jaemin’s head snaps back up, training his features to look attentive again.

“If I miss this, I have to wait all over again.” His gaze drops straight back to —

Dammit.

Is Jaemin stressed? He’s not sure.

Is he allowed to be stressed at a job that he’s employed at for the sole purpose of spying on his colleagues? This is not his real job, but lack of pharmaceutical training aside, he’s an actual pharmacy employee. He gets his colleagues to tell him what to do exactly, and then he simply follows their instructions. The real bleeds into the fake into the real.

Which leads to another problem. His colleagues have been disappearing one by one, slowly but steadily. _Had to go visit their parents. Children fell ill. Down with a case of badly-timed pneumonia. Sister’s wedding somewhere halfway across the ocean._ With every shift Jaemin turns up to, he feels like he’s running out of pharmaceutically-trained options to tell him what to do, à la Remy from _Ratatouille_.

And Renjun.

Jaemin’s temporary union with Mark had felt like an extended and exclusive sleepover with his best friend. Calling each other ridiculous pet names just for the fun of it. That case had been one of those easier, but tedious ones; they had to investigate a gambling ring and by the end of it, Jaemin swore off ever willingly coming into contact with a deck of playing cards.

The bust hadn’t been half as glorious as they seem in the movies. Jaemin didn’t sleep, instead dealt cards for a gruelling forty-eight hours straight at the Big Poker Table, when Mark had finally pulled together a convincing enough case to take the head honcho down... by arrest. Civilly. In this iteration of the game, there was no bloodshed. Mark cuffed the dude, and the operation ended, just like that. Jaemin was almost disappointed that years of academy training — target practice, hand to hand combat, manipulation — had come down to that, right until his body promptly dropped to the floor, joints screaming from exhaustion when the adrenaline had worn off, curling into the presumably unvacuumed carpet. _Glamorous._

Mark has his back. Ever since they were wide-eyed kids throwing fistfuls of sand at each other, even after Mark falls in love with Lee Jeno, even after the three of them trade their school uniforms for police badges and non-civilian status. Mark Lee has his back, always.

Jaemin wants, so badly, to pick up the phone and call him. He’s not allowed to but _technically_ he could. He has Mark’s civilian phone number practically burnt into memory. Besides, he’d probably already broken some rule about undercover marriages when he began dreaming of his partner’s lips every night.

Okay. Maybe he’s stressed.

This goes on every night. Every night he convinces himself that he’s not looking at Renjun’s lips. Because he isn’t.

(He is.)

His resolve. His self-restraint. Something snaps within him. The void, it beckons, and Jaemin jumps straight in.

Kissing Renjun feels like holding the stars in your hands. Not that Jaemin’s done that before, but that is how he imagines it would feel like.

And yeah, somehow in this life, Renjun’s still got Jaemin wrapped around his pinky finger, his mouth over his, and it feels exactly the same as it did before. This time, Renjun is Renjun, top Chinese operative, Jaemin’s not-husband. Not Injun from last summer, Injun from last summer is blonde and carefree and impulsive. Sings like a songbird when he does the dishes. A sappy romanticist. Renjun’s hair is jet black like night and his eyes are sharp and he moves like a fox on the hunt for prey.

“Finally,” Renjun breathes. Weeks of waiting, anticipating, fly past him in an instant. There it is: Renjun finally _says something_. An intergalactic coming to terms.

Jaemin dives back in, he kisses both, because maybe he’s still the same man from summer and maybe he’s still bound by a heartbreak that he refuses to name. Here he is, dragged into the void by his desperation. It makes him tick.

Jaemin is the last employee to leave the store today. It’s nearly 11pm when the pharmacy door whooshes shut behind him.

He takes a minute to stand on the stoop and stretch out the tension from his muscles. Today’s work had been tedious. Only Ten had been in today, and with his injured back, only Jaemin was left to move the boxes around the stockroom.

This is the first glimpse he’s gotten of the outside in a while, finally peeling back the mustiness of the back rooms and replacing it with the cool night air hitting Jaemin’s face as he heads home for the day, when suddenly —

Oof.

A small body with arms outstretched, wrapped around Jaemin’s middle. Iron-grip.

Jaemin uses his finger to tilt his head up tentatively, delicately. The familiarity of the gesture almost shocks him. He doesn’t need to look. Somewhere deep inside his subconscious, he already knows who it is.

“—jun?”  
  


“Oh goodness,” Renjun heaves, “you’re still here. It got so late and I was worried. You didn’t check in, and I thought, I thought something happened to you.”

“I just had a lot of things to do. You could’ve called me beforehand,” Jaemin leans back slightly to look at his phone. _33 UNREAD MESSAGES FROM JUN. 10 MISSED CALLS FROM JUN._ “Oh dear, I think the reception must be terrible.”

Jaemin leans back in. He’s suddenly aware of how closely their bodies are pressed together, their arms entwined around one another. Together they stand on the stoop in the entranceway, locked in an embrace. The moment is too tender for not-husbands to be frozen in.

Jaemin can see the metal on his finger glinting in the half-moonlight. He wants to believe this is real.

Blinks. Perhaps he can.

They walk home, hovering close together, but not close enough. They’re in public now, so Renjun talks about the walk he had around the complex today, how he helped Mrs. Lee on the third floor fix her air-conditioning and the neighbourhood cat that keeps miraculously popping up in their shared unit. Jaemin jokingly complains about the illegible handwriting on the stock tags today, how he had to use a felt-tip marker and rewrite today’s date — 16th — a little clearer, and how many times he had to reorganise the shelves to fit the larger shipment.

Of course, it rains. A lightning bolt splits the night sky in half and releases the storm in torrents. The city bleeds black and grey, water running off the sides of grimy buildings into murky storm drains, the moon barely peeking its head through the clouds. Renjun grabs his hand, and immediately they are sent bolting through the streets, weaving in and out of the obstructions in search of cover.

They finally settle for a pavilion in a deserted park. Needless to say, they are both drenched, and Jaemin can’t stop watching Renjun shake the water droplets away from his eyes.

Renjun smiles. “I know we ran all the way here for shelter, but there’s something I really want to do.”

“What is it?” There is something ethereal about this moment. Jaemin’s voice is hushed, soft. Almost as if talking too loud and too fast would break it.

“You’ll see,” he giggles, grabbing Jaemin’s hand and tugging him back out into the open.

Renjun kisses Jaemin in the rain.

The sharp edges of Renjun have melted away, and there is stardust on his eyelids that he cannot bear to shake away. Jaemin’s mind floats somewhere between the rain pelting down on his back and the shared warmth on his lips. The way there are lone stars twinkling mellowly through the blanket of storm clouds.

Maybe Renjun is a constant variable. This can be them against the world.

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: AGENT0813 TO UPDATE FIELD DIARY._

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_[INPUT RECEIVED]_

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: FIELD DIARY UPDATED._

Jaemin wants to say that something has definitely shifted in the last few hours of his relationship with Renjun. Sure, they started this whole thing off by sleeping together, but this morning he woke up undeniably warm, a certain boy’s nose pressed between his ribs.

_Good morning,_ Jaemin smiles down on him. Renjun’s face is pointed towards him, bleary-eyed and gorgeous, a hand wrapped around Jaemin’s waist.

The warmth in his chest stirs, stamps itself onto a spot along Jaemin’s collarbone. It’s light but obstinately present. When he recovers, Renjun is already padding his way out of the room, mumbling something about Jaemin being late for work.

The good thing about this Renjun is that his hair now is softer, smells nicer. Must be a mix of better shampoo and having naturally coloured hair. When he was blonde, his hair would stick up in the wind, and Jaemin would have him sit between his legs to smooth the cowlicks down by hand. In this life, they’re both busy people, so Jaemin settles for a quick peck on the crown of his head before he ducks out of the apartment to start off his day.

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: TIP OFF RECEIVED. MISSION ACTIVATED. KEY LOCATION B @ 2305H [ + expand to read more]_

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: ACTIVE MISSION_

It’s almost foreign, the feeling of slipping into his bulletproof vest and then slipping a hoodie over it. So is the sight of Renjun strapping a revolver into his holster, and then tipping Jaemin’s chin into something he quips as a “good luck kiss”.

Jaemin obliges.

Their observation point brings them to one of those dark, dingy recesses under a bridge, and both of them linger there, as quietly and as naturally as two men in bulletproof vests with a gun can sit.

“I’m bored,” Renjun lolls his head to dramatically fall into Jaemin’s lap.

Jaemin’s gaze flickers from the back end of the water, back to Renjun’s face. “Gotta wait.”

“They won’t move tonight,” Renjun pouts. “I’ve been tracking them, I even told HQ that today would be a waste of time and resources. But did they listen to me?” Renjun slaps the slab of pavement beside him in mock anguish.

Jaemin laughs. China’s ace — could snap someone’s neck in half if they wanted to — here in his lap, acting like a kid throwing a tantrum. Something aches in Jaemin to kiss the pout away.

“Then do it,” Renjun grins.

Jaemin peers down at the boy in his lap. “What?”

“You said you wanted to kiss it away,” Renjun explains, slowly, like he’s explaining quantum physics to a child, “so do it. We’re here all night.”

“Okay.” Jaemin blinks. Momentarily, he thinks about all the constellations that they could be seeing if they were not here, in Seoul. “For good luck?”

Jaemin can't see Renjun's face, the street light barely reflecting off as a glint on his glasses, but he reckons that he's smiling back too. “I don’t need good luck, silly,” Renjun laughs, inching closer, “I never miss.”

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[INPUT RECEIVED]

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: MISSION ENDED. RED HERRING OPERATION._

Another day of stumbling around the stockroom, and then shuffling his fatigued body all the way home. While the last mission was a red herring, the next best course of action would be to lay low for the moment, until they regain their bearings.

The corridor hums softly, the sound of a ukulele thrumming in an otherwise quiet building, the strains of a voice lightly crooning along to the melody.

It’s everything to Jaemin. Underneath his closed eyelids when he kisses Renjun now, he thinks of Barcelona days, thinking of how a bleached head of hair would tremble when he laughed, how his voice was always lilting as if his life was an intricately composed song that he was carefully trained to perform. And Renjun’s a born performer, in all senses of the word.

Back in Seoul, Min is standing outside his front door, keys out of his pocket, keyring looped around his thumb. His husband is behind that door.

His reverie is broken by a timely interjection, Renjun pulling the door open, almost as if he knew Jaemin was on the other side. “Why are you standing outside? What’s wrong?”

Jaemin removes his shoes as he comes in through the doorway. Sometimes he wishes that things were simpler. In his reimagined life, he only crosses paths with Renjun once, and that one time marks the start of a forever. There are no double identities, no secrets, no walls that he’s afraid to break down in this life. In this life, Jaemin is a pharmacist’s assistant, Renjun is a photographer, they are married to each other and every night, Jaemin gets to kiss Renjun without feeling like he’s done something terrible and —

Renjun’s hands hover over the radio to turn the music down.

Jaemin stares at the floorboard peeking out between his toes and wills himself to _seriously, get it together_.

Except he doesn’t. His brain to mouth filter is pretty much non-existent at this point.

“Why don’t you continue singing?” Jaemin presses, feels the flower petals curling over his mouth. Mentally, he berates himself for making the question sound like a plea, but really, this is the point of no return. “I like it when you sing.”

Renjun’s face is close, impossibly close to his, there’s nowhere for Jaemin to look but _there_. Renjun looks like he knows. He definitely knows.

“There's something else that I'd rather do.” Renjun leans in. His voice is low. Teasing, almost. “If I didn’t stop singing, would I still be able to do this?”

_This_ is a kiss that Renjun places tentatively on Jaemin’s mouth.

Jaemin tunes out the guilt buzzing inside his head, ignores the bathroom pipes clanging something truly awful in the back of the apartment and presses back, fiercer, hungrier. Maybe for once, he feels like there is a whole galaxy ripe for his taking.

_And though I close my eyes, I see La Vie En Rose._

It is enough. It is enough.

It is —

_NA JAEMIN,_ a voice that sounds something like Mark Lee shouts from outside, in the corridor, the air suddenly buzzing, frenetic, _HUANG RENJUN IS A TRAITOR._

Somewhere nearby him, too close, there is the sound of a gun being loaded. It reverberates in the sickly quiet.

All it takes is a split second: the gravity of the situation begins to weigh on Jaemin’s chest, crushing it. Even in this eleventh hour, there is a realisation that he does not want to come to terms with.

The stars, they burn no longer.

_BANG._

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_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: MISSION FAILURE_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... call that a double crossing

_TO WINWIN:_   
_WHEN I TURN THE MUSIC DOWN_

_TO WINWIN:_   
_IT’S SHOWTIME_

From his peripheral vision, Jaemin collapses in on himself and explodes into a supernova. Jaemin falls apart in this damned house; Renjun orchestrates it and falls away. Outside, the world plays on, a new ball game altogether.

The sound of footsteps, presumably Mark Lee’s, hasten with the gunshot. _There’s no point_ , Renjun thinks, as he slips out through the window, like a cat. Drops into Dong Sicheng’s apartment, _he’s too late_.

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: TIP OFF RECEIVED. MISSION ACTIVATED. KEY LOCATION B @ 2305H [ + expand to read more]_

_ENCRYPTED MESSAGE: ACTIVE MISSION_

_FROM: WINWIN_   
_ARE THEY COMING TODAY?_

_FROM: WINWIN_   
_WHAT A WASTE OF TIME_

_FROM: WINWIN_   
_I’VE ALREADY MOVED US_

The messages come at the same time, and Renjun groans a little at the uncanny timing. He just cannot wait to sit out under a bridge in layers of weaponry and armor all night for absolutely no reason.

Maybe he’ll try to make it a little fun.

_FROM: WINWIN_   
_IT’S THE 16TH. KEEP HIM AWAY._

_FROM: WINWIN_   
_TEN IS ALREADY KEEPING HIM IN THE BACKROOM FOR OVERTIME. MAKE OF THAT WHAT YOU WILL._

_FROM: WINWIN_   
_HELLO, NEIGHBOUR_

_TO: WINWIN_   
_WE’RE GETTING MARRIED AT HQ SOON._

_TO: WINWIN_   
_I SEE HIM. NA JAEMIN._

_FROM: WINWIN_   
_I HAVE AN OFFER FOR YOU THAT YOU CANNOT REFUSE._

There are many things that people don’t know about Huang Renjun. Sure, top marksman of his squadron, valedictorian of the military academy, list of impressive accomplished missions.

But also, rotten. In cahoots with the triads.

Renjun walks into that laundromat in Barcelona, coming in from all the sunlight beating down on the pavement, into the semi-darkness.

He waits.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to [xin](https://twitter.com/prive_bbh) for being my beta and reading all my self-indulgent ideas <3
> 
> inspired by a drabble that I did for [nat](https://twitter.com/itsmclovinbot)
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/_hwangtwt) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/_hwangtwt)


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